The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by Donplaysguitar
    or if you just want to be pragmatic,

    if when playing a song you are using chord scales/modes that are diatonic to the key signature, but on some chords MUST change, then you are in a different key center.

    you can call it modulation but might be best advised not to, per the above.
    Well yes, mostly I would find that odd, because for example the move C7 F Fm7 Bb7 C is so common in C tunes; but Mark Levine for instance actually name the Fm7 Bb7 as belonging to Eb, so.... he’s pretty widely read, so that’s a thing

    Honestly it doesn’t matter what you call it, but you better have a plan for dealing with it cos it will be on the tests so to speak.
    And of course jazzers have a perfectly good name for it, the Backdoor.

    It is a common feature of tunes in C, one can leave it at that.

    (besides if it was a real key change wouldn’t you expect to it return to F via G7?)

    But the main thing is how people play.... The only problem is when you think the key of Just Friends for example is given by the first chord and you have a train wreck at least with mid level players (great players would pick up on it fast and modulate to the appropriate key.)

    So you have to say that goofy thing at jams ‘first chord x’ because people understand harmony at the local level but don’t see it as a sort of multi level structure within an overall key.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Use of scare quotes... yeah, it doesn’t modulate. It moves abruptly into the new tonality without passing go and without collecting £200

    Thus ‘non functional’ harmony
    other terms for NFH could be 'forced harmony"..

    todays approach to harmony (in all styles of playing) is very expanded..it could be considered modal without being called such..

    diatonic harmony is used as a jumping off point rather than a destination and guide to home..

    using traditional diatonic based tunes as examples of "true modulation" and trying to fit that definition on many of todays compositions seems to only confuse the issue more than solve it

    I have posted this before; the tune 'All Blues" I say its a Blues tune!..I get ALOT of flack about this..to me its Miles having a bit of fun..patching together blues cliches from (major/minor/dominant) blues and
    then tying them together with a 6/8 feel..resulting in a quilt of blues from ALL styles of the form thus All Blues

    I think the term "modulation" might bring forth the same kind of reaction..some logical..some not..does this mean there is no "correct" way to define this..of course not..
    but at the same time it does not permit or prohibit a musicians way to play over the harmony in question

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    as a Banacos disciple you do the whole Giant Steps from one key centre thing? Or is that old news now?
    Still at it, me friend. Wrote out all of the chord tones in solfege related to B major. I think I might still have the sheet.

    It helped a lot at the time, but I have to review it again to make it still. I think the great musicians of yesteryear thought in both axis all the time melody and harmony. They might have expressed one axis more so than the other at times, but harmony and melody were always present.

    That's why I was curious about roman analysis. On one hand, you are relating chords to key centers and a bigger picture. But the next step usually seems to be "how do I get inside this chord?" instead of "how do I get inside the simultaneous melodies that move throughout a key?"

    Maybe that second bit is connected to Barry Harris? Seems as though, if you want to be a great improvisor, you have to the big picture and minutiae in mind at all times. I often find myself getting stuck n the the minutiae

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by PickingMyEars
    Still at it, me friend. Wrote out all of the chord tones in solfege related to B major. I think I might still have the sheet.

    It helped a lot at the time, but I have to review it again to make it still. I think the great musicians of yesteryear thought in both axis all the time melody and harmony. They might have expressed one axis more so than the other at times, but harmony and melody were always present.
    if you want to make you head hurt check out the Guidonian hexachord stuff I posted above. It can be a remarkably intuitive system but it’s like the opposite of that... you have two or three tonalities within a single scale.... and that’s how Bach etc learned apparently.

    That's why I was curious about roman analysis. On one hand, you are relating chords to key centers and a bigger picture. But the next step usually seems to be "how do I get inside this chord?" instead of "how do I get inside the simultaneous melodies that move throughout a key?"
    I’m getting less interested in Roman Numeral analysis - it’s fine I guess? It was invented as a cheat sheet way to teach harmony, analogous to Aebersold’s use of chord scales for beginning jazz improvisers as far as I can see. As we all know counterpoint and bebop language etc take a long time to learn and are often as much about idiom and specific cases as ‘here are some rules.’

    It seems to me advanced musicians sweat the specifics to the point where generalising theories like these aren’t that important.

    Simultaneous melodies through a key seems like my jam. Harmony is a fairy tale told about counterpoint as they say (apparently)

    a good exercise is chord melody and so on, writing out chords or playing chords at a piano because you see how they relate to the top line, bass and any countermelodies you might have. Chord symbols and Roman numeral functional analysis (and the guitar fretboard) doesn’t give you that .

    On the other hand a very loose tonic/dominant sense of functionality is something I’ve heard a lot of jazzers discuss and I think it’s something that is useful as a general organising principle, while the ins and outs of voice leading are handled in a detailed way .

    Maybe that second bit is connected to Barry Harris? Seems as though, if you want to be a great improvisor, you have to the big picture and minutiae in mind at all times. I often find myself getting stuck n the the minutiae
    Barry Harris is very much about that. That’s the point of the scale of chords. But it’s similar to the baroque/classical stuff I’ve been looking into lately (Sanguinetti etc) except the 8 note scale (b6 in the major key) gives you more Romantic richness ala Brahms Chopin etc. That’s where Barry is coming from with his harmony.

  6. #30

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    last point from me on this thread, promise

    Teachers in the past have explained improvised lines and phrases to me as voices in motion--i.e. that these melodies are still comprised of voices (SATB) but that they don't line up vertically as harmony might.

    Interesting concept. The application is to be aware of those voices and trace the "mini-melodies" that they create. The top soprano part of a phrase or line might peak with a high Eb. The next part of that soprano part might descend to a D natural.

    Easier to show visually, but I don't have that type of know how. Basically, you can trace several melodies through one 8 measure phrase of improvisation--if you are transcribing a master bebop musician.

    The way they do this complex maze of melodies, I've been told, is by holding on to notes from a phrase as you create a new line. You hold on to the highest note in your line or the lowest, all in your inner ear.

    ... I think I derailed the OP a bit. Last post on this here thread, best I keep to my playing

  7. #31

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    OK list of common tunes that DEFINITELY change key at some point ;-)

    Body and Soul
    Have You Met Miss Jones
    The Way You Look Tonight
    All the Things You Are
    I'll Remember April
    Cherokee
    Invitation
    Green Dolphin Street
    How About You?
    I'm Old Fashioned
    Joy Spring
    I'll Remember You
    China Boy
    Tea For Two
    26-2/Giant Steps/Countdown/Satellite etc
    Bernie's Tune
    How High The Moon

    Tunes that maybe don't????
    Just Friends
    Rhythm Changes
    12 bar blues
    I Can't Get Started
    Lady Be Good (swing changes not iReal which has a move to relative minor.)
    I'm Beginning to See the Light
    Don't Get Round Much Anymore

    Tunes that modulate only quite briefly to near keys (like subdominant, dominant and relative minor) that are really not unusual so it's kind of hard to tell and YMMV???
    Softly
    Honeysuckle Rose
    Embraceable You
    Stella
    Georgia on My Mind
    They Can't Take That Away
    Out of Nowhere
    Take the A Train
    Limehouse Blues

    However to add to the confusion some tunes that maybe don't modulate have strongly chromatic chords that need to be accommodated with some sort of - quasi key change???

    A good example is the Eb7 chord in Out of Nowhere. Not an unusual chord in G major by any means, but needs an Eb7 type sound here; can't be blagged. (Getz uses the blues! Which sounds GREAT.)
    Last edited by christianm77; 02-17-2021 at 07:04 AM.

  8. #32
    Thank you all for the time to reply my topic.

    Still trying to give me some time to read all in depth.

    I saw some or your words and seems theres lot of information there.

    Thanks for your knowledge and time.

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by man-argentina
    Thank you all for the time to reply my topic.

    Still trying to give me some time to read all in depth.

    I saw some or your words and seems theres lot of information there.

    Thanks for your knowledge and time.
    Probably only my last post is strictly relevant....

  10. #34

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    It's fairly simple to me. If I see

    C - C7 - F - Fm
    Em - A7 - Dm - G7

    Only the A7-Dm is a temporary modulation (if I want to use it).


    If I see

    Dm - G7 - C - F
    Bm7b5 - E7b9 - Am - %

    Then that tune has modulated into its relative minor.


    If I see

    Am - Dm - G7 - C
    F - Bbm - Eb7 - Ab

    Then that tune has modulated from C into Ab.


    If I see a modal tune like

    Fm - % - E - Gb
    Bb7 - Db7 - Ab - %

    The concept of modulation doesn't apply.

    Anything else is extremely academic and probably only for authors of clever books.

  11. #35

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    Two other things occurred to me. One is

    Dm7b5 - G7b9 - CM7

    Which I'd call a modal interchange, not a modulation per se.

    The other's a blues form

    E7 - A7 - E7 - %
    A7 - % - E7 - %
    B7 - A7 - E7 - B7

    Which is either several modulations or none. I think I'd say none, personally.